[ubuntu-nz] Wellington Ubuntu Gathering?

[David Beale]

Hi Dan, my name is Dave and here is my two cents worth based on past
(distant) experiences.
Many years ago I set up a computer user group for Sega users in Hawera.
We had about 23 members and it soon became apparent that some members
were going to accelerate and others were going to take a bit longer.
This caused a bit of a rift in the club and some members dropped away
because meeting discussions were over their heads.
It became obvious that we had to cater for new and slower members and we
did this by constructing a curriculum (6 months) and maintaining meeting
agendas. Part of the meeting was dedicated to new users and part to the
more experienced.
Without having a set curriculum and sticking to it any new group will be
subject to division.
First set the objectives by finding out what the needs are. This may
vary from what you think the needs are (another thing I had to learn way
back) and establish what the learning rate will possibly be (middle aged
people take longer than the young and the old).
>From there it is basic planning, setting the goal from the objective and
the time line from the learning rate.
Once it is done the first time then it needs to repeat periodically 
You are fortunate that you have the Welly LUG group for those that excel
l to migrate to and hopefully not dominate your new user group.

Hope this helps
Good luck
Dave




On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 14:19 +1300, D F wrote:
> Hi, Im Dan and I just recently became interested in Ubuntu. Being
> somewhat new to working with Ubuntu I recently broke my windows 7
> trying to work with partitions, but thats another story.
>  
> Anyway I was wondering if there any events, seminars, group
> discussions, support groups etc that happen within Wellington at any
> time??
>  
> If not is there any interest in setting something up? Maybe even an
> informal gathering to start with?
>  
> I work in a community minded organisation as a Youth Support Worker
> and as such may be able to host a small gathering in my workplace, but
> this all relys on a display of interest and some external support (not
> financial just organisational).
>  
> One of my personal ideas is to create a distribution of Ubuntu
> pre-loaded for students in college and university that cannot afford
> mainstream OS or software. Ive already been advocating for OpenOffice
> in my personal life and had great responses but finding Ubuntu has
> opened up so many more options I would love to explore. 
>  
> Anyway thats my two cents to the equation for now, if someone could
> get in touch with me to develop the group meeting idea or put it in
> perspective that would be great.
>  
> Im definately an amatuer but Im keen to learn and hope I can be of
> some use in the effort to advocate for Ubuntu.
>  
> Cheers,
>  
> Dan